More than doubled the previous record of fusion energy generation and sustainability in the United States: From reactors to reactors, and how nuclear meltdowns can be deadly
But nuclear technology has been in use for decades in the United States, and it still produces nearly a fifth of US electricity with virtually no carbon emissions. The safety track record is very solid. Plus, issues of energy security are as relevant as ever, for reasons that have everything to do with those missiles landing near Zaporizhzhia. A cocktail of reasons has profoundly changed attitudes toward nuclear energy in recent months. From California to Germany, places planning to retire their reactors have now said they believe nuclear energy is part of the future—both to provide clean, reliable energy at night and when winds are low, and as a way to reduce dependence on Russian gas and oil.
Betti agrees that the timeline to building a fusion plant is “definitely decades”. But, he adds, that could change. He says there’s a possibility of a breakthrough. And the new NIF results could help spur that breakthrough forward. You’re going to encourage people to look into this form of fusion to see if we can turn it into an energy-making system.
Now commercial businesses are preparing to generate and sell fusion energy, so optimistic they are that this energy of the future could come online by mid-century.
On Wednesday, however, scientists working in the United Kingdom announced that they more than doubled the previous record for generating and sustaining nuclear fusion, which is the same process that allows the sun and stars to shine so brightly.
Nuclear is a zero-emission energy source, according to the Department of Energy. It contains dangerous radioactive waste that needs to be stored safely. Nuclear meltdowns, although rare, have occurred throughout history with wide-ranging and deadly results such as at the Fukushima and Chernobyl reactors.
59 megajoule sustained fusion energy in the first time with a donut-shaped machine and the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
Scientists in the English village of Culham near Oxford were able to create a record-breaking 59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy in less than 5 seconds, thanks to a giant donut-shaped machine. Five seconds is the limit the machine can sustain the power before its magnets overheat.
The fusion process takes place at high temperatures that can be as hot as 150 million degrees Celsius, 10 times hotter than the center of the sun.
Tony Donné, CEO of EUROfusion, said at the press conference that their experiment showed for the first time that it is possible to sustain a fusion process using the same fuel mix as future fusion power plants.
The project was carried out in partnership with the UK Atomic Energy Authority by a group of experts, students and staff from across Europe. The European Commission also contributed funding.
The potential for fusion energy is enormous. The experiment used the elements deuterium and tritium – which are isotopes of hydrogen – to fuel the fusion. Those elements can be found in the water.
The results have taken us a step closer to overcoming one of the biggest challenges of engineering and science, said Ian Chapman, the CEO of the UK Atomic Energy Authority.
This was excellent news for the project in France, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, better known as ITER. Its main aim is to show fusion can be utilized in the real world. Fossil fuels likecoal, oil and gas will no longer be needed in the world if it can.
Nuclear fusion is hard to harness. Without protection, the very high temperatures needed would damage the reactor in which the process takes place, so scientists use magnetic fields to contain the heated fuel. The magnetic fields protect the surrounding material. The force fields are interfered with by the heated deuterium’s magnetic fields. This is the way fusion was created by the JET facility. The heat and pressure generated by the reaction makes this likely to be the last one for the JET. It is unlikely it will be used again.
Saint Paul–Lez-Durance, France — A historic moment for nuclear fusion in the sun and the building site of a large, clean, affordable house
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that the world needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by half over the next decade and achieve zero emissions by the year century’s end. That means making a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, like coal, oil and gas.
An impressive 59 million joules of energy is only enough to power a typical American home for about half a day. Even though this recent accomplishment will not result in a new power plant immediately, it is still a wonderful development for a world that is hungry for energy and concerned about the dangers associated with traditional power generation.
Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France — From a small hill in the southern French region of Provence, you can see two suns. One has been blazing for four-and-a-half billion years and is setting. The other is being built by thousands of human minds and hands, and is — far more slowly — rising. The last rays of the evening sun cast a magical glow over the other, creating an enormous construction site that could solve the biggest crisis in human history.
35 nations have come together to try and master Nuclear fusion, a process that takes place naturally in the sun and all stars, but is very difficult to replicate on Earth.
Atomic experts rarely like to estimate when fusion energy may be widely available, often joking that, no matter when you ask, it’s always 30 years away.
It was enough for one house to be powered, but a lot of energy went into the process that didn’t come out. Yet it was a truly historic moment. Nuclear fusion can sustain on Earth if it’s right.
What do we really need to know about the ITER fusion energy? – John Bigot’s optimistic outlook for the future of ITER
The war in Ukraine was unprecedented and something that Coblentz couldn’t predict for the future of ITER is an issue that will be tricky for the next director general. Bigot was tasked with coordinating the views of the seven main members of the group on handling a variety of issues.
Bigot shared his infectious optimism for fusion energy from his sunny office which overlooked the tokamak, a sci-fi like structure still under construction.
“Not anymore. Not since the Industrial Revolution and the following population explosion. So we embraced fossil fuels and did a lot of harm to our environment. He said that we are currently in the middle of a climate crisis with 8 billion strong.
We should eliminate ourselves from our current main power source. The best option seems to be that which the universe has used for billions of years.
By raising temperatures inside the tokamak to unfathomably high levels, the particles from the fuel are forced to fuse into one. The process creates helium and neutrons — which are lighter in mass than the parts they were originally made of.
In the UK scientists are working on a huge donut-shaped machine with giant magnets called a tokamak to try and generate the same result. The missing mass converts to an enormous amount of energy. The tokamak’s walls are lined with a blanket of neutrons, which escape the plasma, and then hit it as heat. This heat can then be used to warm water, create steam and power turbines to generate power.
Plasma is the stuff 99.9% of the universe is made of, including the stars, our sun and all interstellar matter. We can see it when it’s used in television and neon lights here on Earth.
The ITER Project: Creating 1000,000,000 kWh of Energy with More Than 100 Million New Magnets, and Building Construction for the Ikamak
The goal of the ITER project is to generate 500,000,000 kWh of energy from 50,000,000 kWh of input, using newer magnets that will last much longer.
A single gram of tritium is worth $30,000. Nuclear fusion will present the world’s fusion masters with yet another challenge if demand goes through the roof.
The construction of 39 building sites is very complex. The main worksite is a markedly sterile environment, where tremendous components are being put into place with the help of 750-ton cranes. The shell of the tokamak is being built, but workers are still waiting for some parts, including a giant magnet from Russia.
The dimensions are mind-blowing. The tokamak will ultimately weigh 23,000 tons. That’s the combined weight of three Eiffel towers. It will have a million components, but then differ into 10 million smaller parts.
This huge monster will be surrounded by magnets that are the biggest ever created. Their staggering size — some of them have diameters of up to 24 meters — means they are are too large to transport and must be assembled on site in a giant hall.
The machine’s digital design sits across hundreds of 3D computer files, which take up more than two terabytes of drive space. That is the same amount of space as it takes to save 160 million Word documents.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/
ITER is a project of peace: the role of Putin and other geopolitics in the creation of a new world order and resolving the Russia crisis
Thirty-five countries are collaborating on ITER, which is run by seven main members — China, the United States, the European Union, Russia, India, Japan and South Korea. It looks a little like the UN Security Council, though the late Bigot, among others, have tried hard to keep geopolitics out of ITER entirely.
As Russia tries to create a new Europe, as well as challenge the post-war world order, there are concerns over its role in ITER, and even more so over its potential exclusion.
The European Commission has made an exception for ITER in its sanctions, despite Russia being cut out of a number of other international scientific projects.
“Before anything around the latest Russia circumstances, that has to date never affected the collaborative spirit. I think it is not an exaggeration to say that ITER is a project of peace,” he said.
Our commitment is as strong as ever. He said the daily politics have had no impact on the endeavors.
The partners seem aware that dropping the ball could mean the end of the project. This, of course, is a tremendous responsibility.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/
ITER: The ITER Project at the Fermilab Tevatron Intl Nuclear Fusion Facility – Celebrating the Centenary of Earth’s Cold History
As the diplomacy and technology fell in step, building began. The foundations were laid in 2010 and the first construction machines went on line in the following year.
The scale and ambition of the ITER project doesn’t seem enormous but it is a proportional response to the mess humans have made of the planet. Energy usage has more than doubled since 1973. It could triple at the end of the century. Seventy percent of all carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere are created through humans’ energy consumption. Fossil fuels account for 80% of the energy we consume.
Warming in the Earth will translate into more deadly heat waves, famine, and floods, and it will also lead to rising sea levels. The impacts of the climate crisis are getting harder and harder to reverse as entire ecosystems reach tipping points and more human lives are put on the line.
In 2010 Time asked Stephen how he would like to see a scientific discovery in his lifetime and he pointed to the process.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/
Energy Secretary Jonathan Bohm says he is excited about the future of the Nuclear Ignition Facility in the USA and vice versa
45% of the construction costs are being funded by the European Union. All the other participant countries are contributing a little over 9% each, by rough estimations. The construction was estimated to cost around 6 billion euros. Around 20 billion euros is now the total which has more than tripled.
Expectations and deadlines were revised to be more realistic under his leadership. First plasma is now expected in 2025, and the first deuterium-tritium experiments are hoped to take place in 2035, though even those are now under review — delayed, in part, by the pandemic and persistent supply chain issues.
He had a car that was in place at seven a.m. and was often here until 10 p.m. You had the belief that he would be involved in any detail that was large or small.
The department announced that the Energy Secretary will make an announcement on Tuesday. The breakthrough was reported by the Financial Times.
The National Ignition Facility is a project that helps create energy from nuclear fusion. In practice, US scientists fire pellets that contain a hydrogen fuel into an array of nearly 200 lasers, essentially creating a series of extremely fast, repeated explosions at the rate of 50 times per second.
The machine that creates the reaction is very hot. The plasma needs to reach at least 150 million degrees Celsius, 10 times hotter than the core of the sun.
Whether it’s using magnets or shooting pellets with lasers, the result is ultimately the same: Heat sustained by the process of fusing the atoms together holds the key to helping produce energy.
What if nuclear fusion fails to produce a lot of clean energy? The Financial Times’ interview with Chittenden on Monday, April 24
“At the moment we’re spending a huge amount of time and money for every experiment we do,” Chittenden said. “We need to bring the cost down by a huge factor.”
The opposing argument is that the result is far away from what is required for the production of electricity. “Therefore, we can say (it) is a success of the science but a long way from providing useful energy.”
There are very few facts on how it was accomplished. The national laboratory refused to confirm the Financial Times’ story, according to the email. “Our analysis is still ongoing, so we’re unable to provide details or confirmation at this time. Breanna Bishop, a senior director at Lawrence Livermore NationalLaboratory, wrote to The Verge that they look forward to sharing more when that process is complete.
There will be a panel discussion and Q&A with experts from the national laboratory right after the press conference. That discussion will also be livestreamed at energy.gov/live and is scheduled to start at 10:30AM ET.
The experiment would launch a decadeslong quest to find an infinite source of clean energy that could help end dependence on fossil fuels. Researchers have been attempting to recreate nuclear fusion in order to duplicate the power of the sun.
The deuterium from a glass of water, with a little tritium added, could power a house for a year. It can be made synthetically, but it’s more difficult to get tritium.
According to an interview with CNN, Carbon Direct’s chief scientist says hydrogen is the most abundant thing found in the universe and only needs a small amount of it. Hydrogen is found in the water, so the energy that comes out of it is clean.
While there’s many more steps until this can be commercially viable, it’s essential for scientists to show that they can create more energy than they started with. It’s not makes sense for it to be developed.
Laser Zap of a Hydrogen Fuel Pellet at the LNL National Ignition Facility on December 5th: From Football Fields to a Nuclear Power Plant
In the US, much of the work is happening at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, in a building that spans the size of three football fields.
“This will not contribute meaningfully to climate abatement in the next 20-30 years,” Friedmann said. The difference between lighting a match and building a gas turbine is more pronounced.
On December 5th that changed. Researchers zap a small pellet of hydrogen fuel using laser beams. The energy out significantly exceeded the energy the lasers put in, according to sources familiar with the result.
“I think the science is great,” Roulstone says of the breakthrough. There are many engineering obstacles. We do not know what the power plant would look like.
The NIF Experiment: Ignition of a Laser-Field-Induced Laser in a Reactor
When a laser is fired at a target, it produces x-rays that shoot out a diamond in a second. The hydrogen atoms were crushed by the diamond’s destruction, causing them to release energy.
NIF first opened in 2009, but its initial laser shots fell well short of expectations. The Department of Energy had invested billions, but the hydrogen in the target was failing to “warm” up.
Betti, who holds a security clearance, declined to say exactly how the ignition milestone would help physicists working on nuclear weapons, but he said “I think it’s very significant.”
“It is a big scientific step,” says Ryan McBride, a nuclear engineer at the University of Michigan. NIF does not mean that it is producing power. He says that the lasers need around 300 megajoules of electricity to make a watt of ultraviolet laser light. If the fusion reaction has more energy than the lasers, it is still less than a percent of the total energy used.
It would take a lot of capsule exploding over a short period of time to give the power grid the energy it needs. “You’d have to perform this many, many times a second,” he says. NIF can currently do around one laser “shot” a week.